Get all 8 Great North releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Golden Age, The Late Bus Home, Up In Smoke, Robber's Eyes, Halves, All Saints Day, Newfoundland, and Soldiers.
1. |
The Spring Tide
03:34
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Lord, lead me to a downtown pay phone
Loose change filling my fingertips
And if it drops there’s nothing left to conjure up
The ghost of that sweet love I left
Clutching flowers to her dress
I remember that fire-swept hillside
Copper wire running through your lips
As you raised your voice
To the night sky
I ran and I ran
And I never looked back
And I covered you
In the spring tide
I folded you into the past
But the flies kept singing
Above the rotting floorboards
Where I once reached gingerly
For your hand
Now I am roaring like the Lion of Judah
There’s a saviour rising in the west
And he’s casting judgments from a crying letter
I wrote as I trembled with bitterness
And those drunken revellers
Swayed in my head
Gold is breaking
Through the misty morning
I’m escaping into the ether
Bare skin is shaking
As the fading streetlight’s
Glowing faintly like the strands of her hair
Lord, lead me by your sapphire angels
Lead me by her rising chest
Lead me to those sweet still waters
Where the pale moon’s
Lighting up my baby’s breath
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2. |
When You Go
02:55
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By the laws of loss and love
I’ll bide my time in the bed we shared
And I’ll hem you into the slowest song
To the beat of your shaky steps
When you go
It feels wrong
But it sounds like singing
Once your mind’s broken like bread
And your tongue’s dried up like grain
I’ll fold you inside my arms
And I’ll speak to you just in case
Tell you I will be yours and yours alone
I won’t adhere to the rushing wind
I won’t adhere to your heart like a torn bass drum
I won’t adhere to your hissing breath
When you go
It feels like snow
But it sounds like singing
So I’ll wait for the seas to part
For the dust to speak
For the city to glow
Silver in its streets
Where the lost will reign
Where the black clouds break
Where the wronged will step
On the heads of state
And in that bursting breath
In that last refrain
Of a symphony
You’ll come back again
It’ll sound like singing
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3. |
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You are my home
You are my home
Wherever I may go
I know you are my home
Though the seas may rise
And the skies may fall
And those floods
May climb over our highest walls
I will hold you up
Over the water
We’ll sail for the dawn
There will be no star
To guide us from the rocks
No floodlights
Cutting through the fog
Only this soft
Whispering voice
Calling in our blood
So we’ll carry on
Till we see a light
We’ll carry on
Till we see a light
But it’s only our eyes
Adjusting to the dark
When I go down low
Will you go beside?
(I will walk with you)
When the coal burns down
When the salt boils through
(I will walk with you)
What must we lose
To find out what won’t move
Lead me to the light
You are my home
You are my home
Wherever I may go
I know you are my home
When I go down low
Will you stay behind?
(I will wait for you)
On the valley floor
In the blackest room
(I will wait for you)
What must we lose
To find out what’s true?
Lead me to the light
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4. |
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Love is a destroying wind
A slow retreating army
It’s a lone star on the horizon
Calling to the sea
And though I know feelings change
And words are cheap
Tonight you’re dying to be heard
So much you’re talking in your sleep
You say you want to leave someone
You say you want to leave someone
Well, how ‘bout me?
No-one keeps anything
Some day it all gets taken away
Even the greatest love
Is gonna fade
So now you wake at night
Look into that familiar face
Those breaths you used to count
Those hands you used to trace
You say you want to leave someone
You say you want to leave someone
Well, how ‘bout me?
You say you want to leave someone
Well, how ‘bout me?
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5. |
I Will Be Made New
04:18
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When the paint was peeling
On the iron in your skin
The choirs in your blood cells
Danced slower with every pill
To the rhythm of your silence
To the singing in your breaths
The lights on your tinderbox tongue
Glowing ember red
When the news finally came
I couldn't take it in
But every man and woman
Will be written in that book
When the great leveller
Comes to reap his crop
Of gauze over the grazes
Of olives in the brine
Of lonely men and women
Calling up the empty night
Of poets and paraders
All trying to steal his lines
So when it's time for kneeling
I will kneel before the blade
I'll let the kind cutter
Sever me from my complaints
And I won’t ask for reasons
For reasons never came
Reason never told you
Who to leave and who to take
There’ll be a time for weeping
And a time to clear the graves out
I will be made new
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6. |
Grace Notes
04:19
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You were Mozart
And I was Gershwin
Recreating what went before him
In the silence
In the grace notes
You moved into the tune
But the dead men
Came and taught you
Words of stone
And crumbling mortar
They taught you reasons
They taught you to be afraid
To be ashamed
I found a golden wind
And we’ll ride it until the end
Put your heart in my open hands
I’ll be keeping it blood red
I’ll be a light in this great abyss
Oh my father
Oh my father
Oh the heroin
In my water
The babies crying
Into the face of the flames
They’d be crying again today
I found a magic pill
In Jerusalem, on that desolate hill
I know it’s a bitter doubt
But I’ll wrestle it
Till it’s blood on my brow
Till I’m turned inside out
As our sympathies
Wailed and wandered
As our firm beliefs
Brayed and bartered
The water we wept into
Rose and parted
And you walked through
I found a leaving note
On the dresser
Forty fathoms below
It said I’m sorry
I’ve got to go
It’s impossible
To call a sleeping dragon
Your only home
For long
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7. |
Actors
04:04
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I’ll walk you down low roads
And dark alleyways
Twisting each phrase
Till they do what I say
But honey don’t do what I do
It was fate
That made me come this way
You’re looking thin
Like a Hollywood waif
Shot full of holes
From those drunken mistakes
You made as you hollered
And howled from the stage
Well, so much for acting
Cos it’s the most real
When it feels the most fake
The storms leave more wreckage
Left strewn in their wake
And even as you move
That fine razor blade
The camera keeps rolling
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8. |
All Our Lies
02:50
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Sign your name to a lease
So they won’t kick you out
Turn your time into money
Till you’re worn right down
And the frauds sing for supper
With their mealy mouths
Wide open
All our lies stuck like dirt
To the driven snow
Filled the bed between us
As the radio played songs
For the feelings that we used to know
So easily
But I’m still the man who told you
That I would not let you go
All our loans were defaulting
So we took ourselves
Down to the river
And we ran aground
All those ships not meant for sailing
All those words not meant for saying
Out loud
But I’m still the man who told you
That I would not let you down
Sing it loud
Sing it long
I will never let you go
I will never let you go
Break the hearts of the bankers
Make the money lenders run
As the great pretenders
Yell into their telephones
Sing it loud
Sing it long
I will never let you go
I will never let you go
And if I’m still the man who loved you
Why won’t you come back home?
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9. |
Salt
03:46
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I tried lying to myself
But it’s hard to be salt
When it’s sour as hell
And the dust on the road
Is blowing into your mouth
And that sad ringing note
Is playing over and over
And the mirrors and smoke
Are all gone
In a gust of wind
As a lovers lament
Holds hands with the mouth
Of the soft firmament
A gaping hole in the ground
Where your body was spent
That blood-spat-on hill
Will be holding its breath
Till you’re gone
All the words being sucked
Out of my throat
By the end of the speech
You were whiter than snow
All those cringe-worthy lines
That the typewriter wrote
I choked them back
By the time that I spoke
You were gone
The ghosts bought you gin
In the lonely eclipse
Of the evening blue
Till somebody slipped
That old crying disease
Into your drink
And the circling city men
Casting lots for your bed
Were all gone
But darling it’s love
And it’s bright bloody red
And the morning will come
When the quick and the dead
Will be raised to the yell
Of a newborn breath
That ship will set sail
With its sails all split
And we’ll be gone
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10. |
Halves
03:54
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All the foals are led out to die
As a frozen howling wind
Is blowing west across the plains
Boring holes in the rocky cliffs
And the sea is tumbling
Straight off the edge of the world
And out of sight
And if you’re scared, darling that’s okay
It just means your heart is beating right
But it’s not for us Siamese twins
Standing high on a burning bridge
To cast our lots in the streets
With the teenagers
To wage our wars with the pioneers
So now these walls are crumbling in
(I will build you brick by brick)
And there’s gravel in every breath
(I will sing inside your chest)
And I’ve come to the end of my road
(I will fold you in my hands)
You carry me one last step
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11. |
When You're Letting Go
02:42
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At your lonely mooring
In this forgotten bay
Every breath you’re drawing
Is taking you further away from me
As your tears are falling
Like streamers from your face
I’m not letting go
At this golden harbour
We’ll take our final bow
Dive into deep blue water
Darling, let it fill our mouths
If all freedom’s fires
Are burning underground
I’m not letting go
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